• Overview
  ...a rough guide to e-learning, for staff
• News and Updates

• Using the Course Materials Repository
• Using Online Coursework Submission
• Using the Plagiarism Detection Service
• Using Moodle
• Using WebCT
• Using Perception
• Using a Personal Response System

• SENDA
• Supporting Online Learning
• IPR and Copyright Guidance
• E-Learning Network (Mailing List)
• Training
• Learning and Teaching

ELeN Newsletter: June 2009

Welcome to the fourth edition of the ELeN Newsletter!

LTT News

ALT-C Entries

Marty has had his poster proposal accepted to be displayed at the next ALT-C conference in September! This is great news for us as a University – it will really “get us on the map” in terms of learning technology, and at such a big conference as well. Last year ALT-C was attended by over 750 people, so this is our chance to impress as many as possible, and maybe even win the Best Poster competition!

E-Learning Review

Having submitted a proposal paper to the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee, the E-learning Review has now been approved for the go ahead! LTT are hoping to start organising this with the first two departments over the summer and anticipate it being a really useful opportunity for departments to review their own practice and find out what others do.

Change of staff in Learning and Teaching Unit

For those of you who don’t know already, Nicola Billam from the Learning and Teaching Unit has now gone off on maternity leave until April next year! Make sure that any enquiries you would usually send straight to her are either sent to Maxwell Stevenson (e-mail: jmstev, non-Essex users should add @essex.ac.uk), or the general LTU email address (e-mail: ltu). Any e-learning enquiries should be sent to the LTT (e-mail: ltt).  

Development Updates

The LTT have been busy bunnies this term, planning and deciding on how to improve some of the systems currently in place. It has been decided that OCS and QuestionMark Perception will be the systems we focus on this year. 

Please be aware – this may mean that the way you use these systems will change, although hopefully for the better. The hope for both systems is that they will become easier to use and extended to cover functionality that has been requested. We will be providing support for staff and students, however if you have any questions on these developments don’t hesitate to contact us (e-mail: ltt).

Handy Hints: Amalgamating your e-learning tools

As we provide many e-learning opportunities at the University, it is easy to find you directing your students to a wide range of learning tools online which can make them easily confused. This can easily happen if you started off using one tool and then started using others… before you know it your students are being sent all over the place!

 Why not think about linking to some of the other tools through just one? For instance, if you have a Moodle course for your module you could provide links to the OCS pages and CMR all from one place! Try using the ‘website link’ resource in your Moodle courses.

We are also looking into ways of integrating our tools more efficiently during our development over the summer. We will let you know how these work so hopefully your students should be able to use one point of contact for all their e-learning requirements.

Elsewhere on the Web

• http://expertvillage.com/
  Very high quality instructional videos.
  
• http://moodle.org/
  People tend to forget this great resource exists!
  
• http://www.tadalist.com/
  Easily create and edit online to do list.